On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 05:06:29PM +1000, Chris Angelico wrote: > > In Javascript: > > > > js> typeof(NaN) > > number > > js> typeof(Infinity) > > number > > > > Odd as it may seem, NANs and INFs are numbers. And the JSON standard > > isn't capable of encoding them. The JSON standard defines "number" in > > such a way that even in the language that originated JSON, it can't > > represent all numbers. > > > > That's JavaScript you're looking at, not JSON.
Yes I know. You can tell I already knew that, by the way I explicitly referred to Javascript, sometimes I'm quite clever like that :-) > The JSON standard never > says anything about IEEE floats. You said the words "supported type" > and clearly implied IEEE floats, complete with infinity and nan, but > that is not what the standard says. The "supported type" in JSON is > simply a string of digits, optionally with a decimal point and/or an > exponent. That is all. You're technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, apart from missing out on negatives :-) Nevertheless, JSON fails to support things which are considered numbers by Javascript and other languages, such as those little-known exotic languages Java, C/C++, PHP, and Python, you might have heard of them :-) We're not arguing about exotic numeric types like quaternions or complex numbers or even fractions. We're talking about the JSON standard not even being able to fully support probably the single most common floating point numeric types in the world. That doesn't strike you as a bit broken? Not even a little bit? The JSON standard didn't just accidently fail to specify what to do with NANs and INFs. It mandates that they are turned into null. JSON is designed to take your numeric data and throw values away, and this is a real problem for people: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/31024 https://github.com/AppMetrics/AppMetrics/issues/502 which is probably why a lot of JSON implementations provide support for INFs and NANs no matter what the standard says. The bottom line here is that the JSON definition of "number" fails to match numeric data types in not just other languages like Python, but even in Javascript. -- Steven _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/GZV3O25ZT63LTCZYOK5G6YAZ4JRGBRY5/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
